The upside of all the in camera correction is supposed to be a low price on the lens but this is pretty expensive for a mediocre lens. I can buy an slr 35mm for about the same and have floating elements etc.

4/3 is a nice idea - and used or refurb with the kit lens - you can get a fair price. The logic being “it’s better than a point and shoot”.

Otherwise it all seems about 25% too much for what you get. Not so much the cameras but the lenses (here I’d say 50%) - there’s something wrong here.

Also - what is the actual focal length after all that correction?
More like 20 mm?

This is small lens. That’s its main claim to fame, not the speed at f2.8, nor the focal length, the equivalent of about 35mm in 35mm photography. But on the small Olympus PEN body, this lens gives you a small package that takes quite good pictures without messing around with a zoom. In particular, it works well as a walking-around street camera, much like an old Leica or a Canon rangefinder of the 1950s/1960s. (See also the optical viewfinder which has image lines specifically for this 17mm lens.)